by Reid Astor
He blinks, taken aback. He sees no sarcasm in that face, when everything points to the conclusion that the man is just fucking with him again. Lars Verdura, beyond the fact that he is a piece of shit, makes no sense at all to him. "I don't swing that way," he says, eventually.
Where other people would falter, Lars gives a snort of derision and shrugs. "Yeah, yeah. Neither do I. It doesn't really matter; you can't take a joke, can you. Do you want my help or not?" The grin that comes back to his face is unnerving in its effortlessness.
He sucks in the dusty, barren air and takes a step back. "Let's say I want to know about my father. What would you offer and what do you want in return?" He looks the man dead in the eye, waiting for the wave of bullshit answers. Something that'll give him a good reason to go one way or another with him.
Lars slumps a little. "Come on and siddown or something, Nikky," he offers, gesturing to any one of the booths and tables set across the store. "Relax for just a damn second. I don't see anybody coming in. And this is a lot of truth to hear standing up."
"It's a slow hour," he agrees in a clipped tone. "But someone could."
The dark-haired man throws his hands up in forfeit. "Well then. I don't give a shit. I'm sitting." With that, he unceremoniously drags up a chair to the front, and straddles it. "As far as business goes, I'm offering you a complete renovation of the area and completely cut strings here. Your debt voided by a couple pushed papers behind a couple peoples' backs," he says, before reaching into his back pocket. "And I've been told your debt is a helluva sum to void. Yeah, great, I know, don't look excited all at once, but Lana insisted I put in one condition."
'Lana' again. Niklas bites back chagrin and looks. The photo is small, single, passport-sized really. He stares it down from the distance before sighing and walking round the counter to get to it and take it. All the while he's careful not to touch Lars' fingers in a strange, acute way- it's like he can feel the heat of the man's skin from several feet away.
The youth in it is non-smiling, dark-skinned, dark-haired. To Niklas, he literally looks like he could be anyone.
"You take this kid as an employee. And you keep him. No matter what. Even if he blows up every last goddamn breve bonbon in this cafe." Lars pats his hand, obviously not noticing the tenseness that shoots up his entire body, and goes back to looking up at him from his comfortable, if inappropriate chair-straddling. "As for your dad... That's a bit more involved. I'll think of the price as I go, but whatever I put forth, if you're not willing to do it, I'll think of something else. I offer paper and recorded evidence."
Niklas looks at the picture again, and at the man. It bothers him profoundly that Svetlana has a part in this... planting. And that she knew his father more than she told him.
One thing at a time. He tries not to think about the deal with his father. "Who is this kid?"
"Just a fence and informer for a little side business." When the barista blanches, Lars just laughs. "Look, Svetlana said you'd would never mind upgrading so long as you had the means. This kid's your means, Nikky," he says.
Warily, he pockets the picture, and wonders to himself if he should just say no. Deny expansion, deny this shady asshole everything he asks even if he is in association with Madam Morris. He can live without knowing about his long-gone father and whatever crimes he's committed, he can live with the debt and The Plan shoved away gathering dust in a distant bedside drawer. He can live with the headaches.
But then, he realizes, he has literally nothing left to lose except this cafe. This cafe, which is bound to collapse on itself one good year and probably soon and leave him with nothing all over again. "Fine," he says. "Fine. But I'm not believing a word about my father that comes out of your goddamn mouth until you produce proof."
"Sounds fair, buddy, so I'll save my breath," Lars says with irritating complacency. "One more thing, though. As a part of our personal deal."
Niklas' blood freezes in mid-turn. "What?"
"I want free espressos when I come in here. That shit is delicious." The man beams and rubs the back of his neck like he just won the Nobel Prize of assholery. In uniting the world in agreement that he is a piece of shit.
He just twitches. "I'll see if Madam Morris can vouch for everything you've said. Until then, you pay."
"One, then. Now. For here."
Supposing it'd be too much to expect a 'please' to follow, he gets to work, feeling the man's eyes follow his every move like lead weights on his arms. The second Viola comes in, he thinks to himself, Madam Morris is about to get a hell of a call.
He freezes when he realizes, in the middle of working the machine, that Lars is just behind him. Behind the counter. He can feel the presence, hear the shifting clothes- and pointedly gets to finishing his work without turning anyway. "Get out. Customers aren't allowed behind here." As soon as the espresso drip is set, he turns to put both hands on the counter, keeping Lars sideways, keeping the askance look on his face.
"My bad," the man laughs harshly, audibly slinking on back out just barely into the appropriate zone. "Wanted to ask you something."
"What is it?" he asks, turning to train and eye on him. "What do you want now?"
Lars backs up and shoves his hands in his pockets, apparently trying to look as harmless as possible. "I didn't really expect a reaction back there, when I mentioned your father. Days ago."
Niklas grabs a mug and wonders what sort of force and how much velocity would make a thick ceramic mass break. How vicious a force would that need? He catches himself, blinks, and sets the mug on the counter by the machine with resolve. "You were pushing buttons. I know that now."
"Why it is such a big deal? That sod wasn't even in your life, if Lana told me correctly."
When my mother was sinking into bedpans and dementia, sometimes she thought I was him, Niklas doesn't say. It’s hard to explain anything to him, not if Lars didn’t have an absent father in his own life. There are questions he wants to ask as inherently as he wants to know himself.
"I don't need to explain anything to you. But you cannot properly blame a man you don't know. And if you can't accuse him, you can't absolve him, either." The espresso should be ready. Lars’ amount, anyway. He turns, picks up the mug, and pours the espresso through, careful not to let the slightest spill escape. With a forced calm he brings it to the counter, yanking a napkin from the reserve as he goes. "You know the rate."
Lars cocks his head to the side and looks at him fondly as he produces his wallet. "You and I may come to be friends, Nikky," he says as he draws out a ten dollar bill and reaches for his hand.
“Doubtful.” And Niklas takes the money away, sticking it all into the register with vehemence. "Verdura, touch me one more time today and I will stick a wire whisk up your ass and turn it on."
"Ah, Mister Baranov," he feigns offense and is, frankly, terrible at it. "Don't threaten me with a good time. And do keep the change." And before any promises can be made or brought through, he's moving to a table with his espresso and producing a phone and looking so sprightly with his coffee that it just looks utterly repulsive.
So Niklas cleans. He cleans and tries not to feel like eyes are following him around the entire store. He cleans and turns up the music to make Lars' phone call as obnoxious as possible until he can't stand Shostakovich himself and has to turn it back down.
And then, he goes to the back of the store and takes a desperate swig from the vodka he keeps secretly stored in the very back of the pantry in a dark bottle under the discreet label of "Vanilla syrup", all the while making solemn promises that the second he gets the time, he's calling Madam Morris.
And when he comes back out, Lars Verdura is gone. The napkin is crumpled up and thrown, disgustingly, into the mug, soaking up excess and catching a bit of the sunset light. There are no notes this time, nothing to remind him who was here. It's a strange relief.
Niklas Baranov cleans up and takes a painkiller and counts minutes until his shift is over. And when Viola bursts
in at last, five minutes after five and sputtering every apology that language permits, he signs off and doesn't even bother going upstairs to take out his phone and speed dial. He just plops down in one of the cafe chairs and ignores Viola studiously as the dial tone hums into his ear.
He tries three times. Svetlana doesn't pick up.
CHAPTER THREE
He wakes from dreams of prowling the streets, of his brothers crowded around and doused in neon lights, and comes into the real world with the realization that he has another headache.
It's gotten to the hour where the sun is streaming in as bright as the end of the world- and that world isn't giving two damns if he's still tired. He picked up the closing shift last night with Viola because the girl was too terrified to take on three customers at a time, and that had ended with her in tears mopping the baking room floor while he handled just about everything else.
"The first thing I want you to understand, Niklas, is that your father loved your mother. Why would I lie to you about that? What are you on about, dear?"
He'd been thumbing at his rosary in the back room closet, holding down allergies that waged war on the smell of ammonia and mold. Outside, he could hear Viola's counter-keeping voice growing gradually more and more shrill as the minutes ticked by without her boss. He'd wanted to say, Yes, obviously, of course he loved her, with all the conviction he never had, but he just said, "I know."
"Yes, yes you know. The second thing is, don't be so upset with me, child. I had a date last night, I couldn't answer the phone when it was all going so lovely. You never get quite so concerned when I cancel appointments, are you growing jealous?"
How to pray the rosary: First, make the Sign of the Cross, and say the Apostles' Creed.
Second, say the "Our Father" prayer. Third, say three "Hail Marys" prayers and the "Glory Be" prayer.
Niklas can't count the amount of times he's gotten stuck on "Our Father" and had to stop completely. He'd reached the end of the rosary all of three times, four times if you count the the time he forgot the words of the last prayer. He thinks his mother would be ashamed of this little thing, but takes comfort in the time when she muttered under her breath that Alexei never managed to get it, either, his son probably took after him in that.
"I'm not jealous, Madam Morris," he had said, and wanted to pull away the lilt of anger touching his tongue, because it is never wise to be angry with Madam Morris. You will only end up angrier by the end of the conversation if you do, he told himself, and measured out his breathes according to the beads that slipped through his fingers. "I'm confused."
"About what, darling?" she'd titter on the line, sympathetically.
He had said, in Russian, "Your friend came yesterday and told me the details. He is planting a fence in my coffee shop. And I still think you lied to me about my father."
There was a long silence.
"Your father loved your mother very much and did everything he could for you two, from what I saw. That is my final word on that," she replies in the same language, gravely. “You sound full of doubt, my child. When was the last time you went to church? Come, I can take you next Sunday, be free-"
He'd tuned her out, and interrupted, angrily, "I don't want a part in your criminal activity, Madam Morris," and hung up.
He lays in bed and remembers everything and nothing in the world seems worth getting up to for a moment. Svetlana will certainly find some way to give him hell for hanging up on her. Still, eventually, with the bright light streaming in and blinding him in his only eye, and the chill biting through his sheet, he takes to routine and drags himself to the window to close it. He ignores how the squeal of its unoiled edges pierces through the air and echoes down the alley.
His desk is just by the window, a miserable, dust-gathering oak thing that Svetlana had thought fancy and whimsically purchased off the streets of Morocco to ship to him. The only thing that rests on it that has actually been regularly used and removed is the ebony wood rosary, but today Niklas doesn't touch it. He's gone over it in his head.
He moves to take a shower and counts ceiling tiles the entire time. His hands scrub pink the caustic burn scars and regions of still-inked flesh. When he gets out of the shower, strangely, he finds a steady periodic orange glow whispering from his phone, seated as always in neat array with his eyepatch, pin and gloves on the television stand.
Svetlana never texts.
Still in a towel, Niklas unlocks it and watches the white screen and black flip up to greet him. He pales, nauseating anger sweeping through him as he reads.
"good morning! tell me, how does your faith coincide with, well, everything you've ever done from age 10 thru 18? unknown number, 05:53”
"i think i've figured it out. one earring for every mark you took back in your day. clever, how they've been soldered on so you couldn't take one off without either breaking it or your ear. kind of sexy. is this how you repent? unknown number, 06:37"
"lana told me what happened. you dont want to do this. unknown number, 6:43"
"just take the kid, trust me, you're already in more trouble than you know. i'll tell you later unknown number, 6:50"
* * *
The kid in front of him is nothing like he conjectured from the picture, but Niklas will take that as a good thing. For example, he smiles more, his hair is longer, and he absolutely cannot sit still. To elaborate, Etburn Novik has his jet hair in a braid down his shoulder, doesn't seem to be able to stop gesturing for his life, and seems to be trying to amateurishly sweet-talk Niklas into hiring him for a job that he already has.
He also has at least three tattoos.
"I mean, I've only worked one job before, and sure, it was retail- I mean, not counting the newspaper delivery and odds jobs- but you see, Mister Baranov, I believe that service and retail are like sister and brother, and-"
He shuts up when he realizes he's being ignored in favor of a large, steaming pot of coffee.
Niklas makes a point of pouring the morning brew excruciatingly slowly into the large heat-safe dispensary, the sound of it filling the silence that the kid has politely made as he waits for him to finish. Then, with a resolute thump, he dumps it closed, sets it in front, and goes to set up another quick flavor brew.
When his task is done, he turns to the kid, and says, "Your first shift starts now. I'll give you the paperwork later." He looks him up and down once, and adds, "And never wear anything that shows your tattoos." The kid promptly looks down at the white rose and the characters that peek from his button-up, and gives him a confused face that makes Niklas add, acidly, "I don't care if it brings this coffeeshop crashing down on top of me. I don't care if I am somehow the only one on this side of the city who can recognize a gang-style tattoo. I don't even care if you earned it or not. If I see it again, I will fire you."
In the back of his mind, he summarily mourns the prospects of this sad little store. Because not only is it run by a failed law student and sponsored by a 58-year old widow with now tangible connections to the world of crime, it employs a grand staff of two: a mousy college student who only asked for the job because she liked baking, and a variable cultist who constantly forgets, laughably, how to work an espresso press. Three to count the ex-juvie, if his tattoo has any truth to it at all.
Etburn Novik hastens to button up and only barely catches the apron when it's thrown his way. By the way his nose scrunches up, he can definitely notice the smell of all of Tethys' spices clinging to it like all of India town got crushed down and put into an apron, but he's wise and ties up without a word.
Niklas turns and finds that the inevitable moment has come upon him. The kid is staring at The Menu with slightly bulged eyes and a mouth half-open. He only prays that Etburn Novik is a better learner than Tethys, and says, "In the morning people are on the go. They prefer the pre-made blends, most of the time. The Menu..." he cringes in spite of himself, and reaches under the counter for the dusty, dog-eared notebook below, and pushes it across the table his way. "I di
dn't make it. Read this, memorize it and never speak to me of it again."
The kid eats up the contents of the notebook with a satisfying enthusiasm, and says, "Wow. Does this thing really call for a blowtorch? Wow. Doesn’t sound like coffee, but wow. I love this job already."
That's about the final straw for that. Niklas leaves the youth for the back room, paces to the pantry, and knocks back his "Vanilla syrup" with alacrity- all before realizing that it's eight in the morning and a Tuesday, and he's already drinking. He pauses for a moment with the vodka in his hand before deciding he deserves it, and takes another drink.
When he comes back out, Viola is standing in the middle of the store, a picture of ginger college misery in her coat, a satchel, and an expression crossed between confusion and devastation. The red flush around her eyes are especially notable on her pale English skin, ready marks of last night's tribulations. "Mister Baranov?" she squeaks, green eyes wide, and points to Etburn Novik "Who is he? I- are you replacing me?"